Need incredibly non-fiddly Dickens themed dinner party recipes quite urgently.

[ScribblyGum]

OK so I don’t need any grief so don’t even start.

I read Bleak House with some friends and now am hosting a Victorian dinner party on Saturday and because of various reasons that are extremely dull timing circumstances are not in my favour.

I’ve got some oxtail in the freezer when it was reduced but never dared to cook it. They ate oxtail back then right?

And I’ve got a packet of suet from last Christmas and some not entirely dodgy windfall apples.

And quite a lot of onions that need eating up.

Can do an online shop for other stuff.
They just drank red wine didn’t they, and watered down beer? Port?

If someone could just tell me what to cook that would be really helpful.

[sleepismysuperpower1]

you could make oxtail and suet pie, with some veggies? im pretty sure they ate both oxtail and suet back then, although not sure if it was in a pie or not. and you could make apple charlotte for pudding? top one on this recipe list. have a great time, it sounds like a fun evening!

[TenThousandSpoons]

Gruel?

[Windygate]

Check the date on the suet, if it's out of date it will be stale and revolting. Leave the oxtail in the freezer if your time poor.
Make something like a steak, onion and mushroom pie, followed by apple crumble. Good old Victorian stodge

[picklemepopcorn]

Would thinking of Beatrix potter be easier? Jam roly poly? Roast ham?
If you think of a Christmas Carol, it's all about the goose and roast veg, isn't it?
I think they still had lots of courses- French onion soup, roast dinner, blancmange, jam roly poly, cheese board?

I'm no expert though.

[CatToddlerUprising]

Brown bread ice cream, spotted dick, Victoria sponge, apple dumplings, kedgeree

[picklemepopcorn]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37654373

[BeanBag7]

Tenthoussandspoons beat me to it, gruel is the obvious one!
I would think some sort of meat pie and veg would be fine. Steamed pudding like spotted dick is definitely Victorian.

[Triglesoffy]

Pie pie pie and pie. Google Mrs Beeton for some recipes.

[CadburysTastesVileNow]

Doesn't it have to be a wedding feast for Bleak House? Or you could go full on Christmas with plum pudding and turkey,etc cf A Christmas Carol.

To get your own back, insist they come in fancy dress ...

[CMOTDibbler]

Onion soup, oxtail stew with parsnips, turnips, carrots served with mash and cabbage, then apple crumble and custard.

Hearty, warming, and all prepare ahead apart from the mash and custard

[ScreamingValenta]

Or you could go full on Christmas with plum pudding and turkey,etc cf A Christmas Carol.

No turkey in A Christmas Carol - it was a roast goose.

Tescos have frozen geese in at the moment if you want to go down that route. V. easy to roast as they're very fatty, so no basting required.

[Cohle]

www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/top-5-dickensian-recipes/

This article has some interesting Dickensian recipes, including one for oxtail stew.

[MsMightyTitanAndHerTroubadours]

jugged hare, kippers ??
but really you cannot go wrong with a pie...it did well for HBC in Sweeney Todd.

[LadyMonicaBaddingham]

Oxtail soup would certainly fit the brief ( Old Curiosity Shop )

A Roast with all the trimming could come from Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol

Pudding could be Almond Cake ( David Copperfield )

And Gin Punch!!

[cdtaylornats]

museumcrush.org/dickens-drinking-tastes-revealed-by-museum/

Thy have the inventory of his cellar

[PerkingFaintly]

Ooh, just went to look up the bit about David Copperfield and his daily fare as a 10-yr-old at the blacking factory – and there are stunt pineapples!

www.gutenberg.org/files/766/766-h/766-h.htm

often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby’s, of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the pastrycooks’ doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s Church—at the back of the church,—which is now removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand—somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. It was a stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it, stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot at about my time every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I dined regularly and handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of red beef from a cook’s shop; or a plate of bread and cheese and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I have forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane, and ordering a ‘small plate’ of that delicacy to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don’t know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for himself, and I wish he hadn’t taken it.

We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread and butter. When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street; or I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and stared at the pineapples.

[ScribblyGum]

at stunt pineapples.

CadburysTastesVileNow, we are in fancy dress. I’ve got a bonnet and everything. Organised on the clothes but not the food front, although this thread has been great for ideas.

Thinking onion gruel/soup, oxtail stew and some sort of pie or suet pudding. That'll do them.